Death and Mourning

The woman is perfected

Stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum

At the very end, when they said to him, we could try to operate on you as a last resort. He didn't want to be operated on. He said ‘I want to go when I am ready, and I will do it in an elegant way.’

Facilis descensus Averno:

Years following years steal something every day; At last they steal us from ourselves away.

In practice it is death that works so seductively behind the image of its brother, sleep

What you possess in the world will be found at the day of your death to belong to someone else. But what you are will be yours forever.

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

There hath he lain for ages and will lie Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

 

O iron nerve to true occasion true, O fall’n at length, that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew.

 

Speak no more of his renown. Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him. God accept him, Christ receive him.

 

I am what happens between the maternity ward and the Crematorium.

One wants to tell a story, like Scheherazade, in order not to die. It’s one of the oldest urges of mankind. It’s a way of stalling death.

Someone spoke of your death, Heraclitus. 4 It brought me Tears, and I remembered how often together We ran the sun down with talk… somewhere You’ve long been dust, my Halicarnassian friend. But your Nightingales live on. Though the Deathworld Claws at everything, it will not touch them. 3

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so, For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

The world’s whole sap is sunk: The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk, Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk, Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh, Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Put out the light, and then put out the light: If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me; but once put out thy light, Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume.

Nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it; he died As one that had been studied in his death To throw away the dearest thing he ow’d, As ’twere a careless trifle.

I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!”

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

To that high capital, where kingly Death Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, He came.

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore!

A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.